"These People Hate You," a short story about band awesomeness.

When I saw the guitar player with designer sunglasses, a black tank top, and a silver cross hanging around his neck, I should have told someone we couldn’t play. My band just called and quit. My parents had been killed that very morning. Instead, I smoked a shit-ton of cigarettes. Sure, my voice doesn’t fare well when I constantly exchange still-burning butts for fresh ones, but chain-smoking at least kept me from having to make conversation with the front man for the other band: a blond-haired, purple-shaded weightlifter whose business card showed him cast in deep, melancholy shadow while wearing a cowboy hat. The card said, “STEELE,” and had a fax line in addition to a phone number. So I smoked, and I watched. I watched as The Johnny Steele band unloaded their $10,000’s worth of equipment; as a show coordinator pointed at the stack of cinder-blocks and said “stage;” as the hired photographer asked Johnny Steele if he could take a picture for his website; as Johnny Steele popped a squat in the driveway and stared inquisitively into the distance.
As Johnny repositioned himself for another photo, Kevin’s Volvo pulled onto the crunchy pebble driveway. Kevin is both tall and thin, two traits which support my observation that, out of the four of us, he is the backbone of the band. As a music education major, he plays saxophone, banjo, percussion, and guitar; he writes music, and copies down the music I can’t write out myself; and at shows, Kevin always works with the sound guy, making sure we get everything we need. The remaining three of us are by no means bad musicians, nor are we uncommitted to the band; it’s just that our relative lack of musical knowledge, in addition to our non-spine-like builds, make Kevin the key candidate for band backbone. So, when the backbone of my band pulled up with a face that was clearly upset, I felt another surge of doubt. I smiled and lit another cigarette.
Kevin moseyed to the top of the driveway while Seth and John, our other two members, were still unfolding themselves from the back seat. I tried to think of something positive to say. “You made it!” Is what I came up with.
“Yup,” Kevin said, jamming both hands into his pockets. “I thought you said this was a school for music?”
I turned and looked at the house, as if I hadn’t really had a chance to inspect it yet. It was, most definitely, a house. There were two stories, a garage, large, unclean windows—it even had cheap patio furniture on either side of the front door. The only thing that suggested there was anything musical about the home—that is, aside from the Johnny Steele band and the pile of cinder-blocks in the back yard—was a black banner that read, “Northridge Music School,” and included rates for half and hour-long piano lessons. I raised a shoulder toward the banner. “It’s a music school,” I reassured him. “Can you believe how much a half-hour lesson is though?”
But Kevin only shook his head. Don’t get me wrong—a show is a show, and we were glad to play—but while we had heard plenty about the Northridge Music School, there had been no mention of it being a house. While one could shrug and suggest a lapse in memory, I had a feeling my contact for the show had only fed me certain details. I knew Andy Millstone, a Steinway Artist and talented singer-songwriter, from a few years back, when I was taking voice lessons. When I ran into him and he offered me the show at his brand-new music facility, I was surprised to find he’d traded in his standard turtleneck for a fuzzy brown “Manager’s Jacket,” in addition to a cocaine-white smile. He told me about his new music facility, about a grand-opening show before an audience of 150-300 people. I heard him out, and by the time I told the band about the gig, I think I half-imagined the place to be thirty stories tall, complete with champagne fountains and a free instrument every time you visited. I most certainly hadn’t expected a house.
Seth and John, though, were another story. Seth wore his knee-length green trench coat, both blue eyes as fresh as always; John made mention of smoking a spliff. The house situation, it seemed, hadn’t phased either one of them. The downstairs was cleared out for a practice space, so the four of us unloaded Kevin’s Volvo and set up inside. A door flew open, and a whirlwind of brown coat sleeves entered the room, shaking hands with everyone in the band. Andy Millstone turned to me with his Colgate smile. “So you boys ready to set up?”
I nodded and gestured to the freshly-unpacked instruments. “Sure thing. We were going to run through a few tunes first. Show starts at seven-thirty?”
Andy shook his head, still beaming. “Nope. Six-thirty.”
“Six-thirty?”
But Andy was already half-way out the door, waving, smiling, bald head glistening like a jewel. I turned to the band, and before Kevin could say anything, I insisted that the email had definitely said seven. It didn’t matter. We repacked our gear and lugged it across the sopping lawn to the stage.
While its sides consisted of stacked cinder blocks, the stage surface itself was made of poured concrete, its rough face seven feet wide and five feet deep. It was a good space, or at least, it would have been, had a drum set not been occupying the entire back and middle area. The drummer for the Johnny Steele band, a heavy-set dude in his late thirties whose idea of fashion consisted of motorcycle t-shirts and fiery red bandannas, was tightening his cymbals when we asked if he was leaving his drums in the middle of the stage. “Don’t worry, bros,” he said. “I got ‘em pushed back.”
The band looked at me, but I was already safe behind my cigarette. I set my keyboard up on what still remained of the right corner of the stage. “He’s got his drums pushed back,” I said. “I think that’s pretty good.”
It took us maybe ten minutes to set up our instruments and amps. I plugged in my last cord and gazed out into the lawn. The backyard was spacious. A herd of plastic tables hunkered down on the grass, their black tablecloths billowing with each shift of the temperamental weather. Christmas lights were strung up around the house, and there was a second-story balcony that people could watch from, too. I looked over to Kevin, also taking a breath after unpacking, and his face suggested a similar, new-found satisfaction. The show was earlier than we had expected, but that meant we could go home earlier, maybe hit a bar. And, despite my developing impression that Andy Millstone had once sold used cars, he was still a good contact to know. Playing a show an hour earlier than expected wouldn’t go unnoticed, and if the rest of the evening went well enough, I figured that he might even lend us his brilliant smile to blind some club-owner into giving us a show.
“Where are you going?” Kevin asked me, as I stepped down from the stage, only just missing an open patch of mud.
“Getting a drink,” I said, pointing at the open window beneath the hand-drawn sign which read, in bright red marker,” LIBATION STATION.” “You going to be okay with everything up here?”
Kevin looked at his watch. “We’ve got twenty minutes, so I’m going to find the sound guy and get our mics set up. Grab me a beer?”
I held out a thumbs-up and crossed the lawn. I smelled my fingers before stepping up to the window. They smelled like cigarettes.
“What can I get for you?” asked the girl working the Libation Station. She had freckled shoulders and braces that should have been put on years ago.
“Two beers, please,” I said, dropping my only five-dollar bill into the “Donations” jar. She procured a Budweisers from a cooler at her feet, cracked their seals, and began pouring them into red plastic cups, putting just over half a beer in each one. I was reminded of flight attendants, who, when you ask for a Coke, give you a toy-sized cup containing ice and a thimble of cola. I was tempted to stop her mid-pour, say, “Oh, sorry, I meant the can. Please.” But, I didn’t. I took my two half-beers and returned to the stage.
“Did you drink some of this?” Kevin asked, when I handed him the cup. He had mic cables slung over both shoulders.
“No. The Libation Station attendant hates full beers. What’s the story on the sound?”
Kevin took a drink. “That guy,” he said, as he pointed to a skinny man fighting a tangle of wires near the fence. “He’s got us all taken care of.”
The sound guy looked like he was losing the fight. “You’re sure?” I asked.
“Oh, fo sho-sho,” said Seth. I turned around and saw him still wearing his trench coat, his acoustic bass guitar a decidedly odd addition to his outfit. “That mofo’s got us covered.”
Often, it only takes Seth’s mild reassurance of some mofo’s abilities for me to place total confidence in him as well. What might seem a shitty situation is really a moment of endless opportunity when you look at like Seth does. The guy drowning in quarter-inch cables was, in fact, our guardian angel. So, I relaxed, and decided to let the sound guy work out whatever magic he had tucked up his sleeves. I smoked a few more cigarettes, stood back as a couple more speakers joined the stage, as microphone cables started running back and forth like vines. Six-thirty came and went, but we didn’t worry about it. There weren’t a ton of people there, and I was convinced that Andy Millstone was the only person who thought the show was supposed to start at six-thirty anyways. Judging by the amount of equipment that now occupied the stage, I figured we’d be checking mics by five ‘til, and playing by seven. I was going to need another beer. Kevin asked if I could grab him a refill, too.
“Could I get two more beers please?”
The attendant was leaning on the counter, looking at her nails. “Sure,” she said, taking the two cups and filling them, again, only halfway.
I put on a nice fake smile, the kind where I don’t show my yellowed teeth or my under bite. I started to turn around, when she cleared her throat behind me.
“Aren’t you going to donate?”
I looked back. Her arms were crossed. She was looking from me to the jar with her mouth hanging open, and I felt inclined to suggest that she try breathing with her lips closed. Instead, I told her that I’d already donated.
“Most people donate each time they come up,” she said.
“It’s okay, actually, because I put in a five. That’s like, five donations, right?” I didn’t really want to pull out my “I’m a broke student” speech, so I was hoping to leave it at that. Besides, we were the band. I’m not positive on the law, but I’m pretty sure there’s a mandate somewhere that secures free beer for performing musicians. Really, I should have kept my five dollars and dropped in a note that read, “u owe me beer. -the band.” When she finally rolled her eyes and shrugged her shoulders, I told her I’d be back three more times to finish off that five.
“Technically,” she said, again as I was walking away, “It’s just one more trip. You’ve already taken four beers.”
I bit my lip, held up one of the half-full cups, and kept walking. “What took you so long?” Kevin asked. “Is this less beer than last time?”
“I was wrong about the Libation Station bitch hating full beers. Turns out she just hates me.”
“She must. Last time she was only an attendant.”
I waved away the conversation. “So are we about ready to check mics?”
Kevin shook his head. The sound guy was still by the fence. He’d defeated the tangle of cords, but was now inspecting a sound board as if it were an ancient Egyptian artifact. I drank half of my half-beer, and lit a cigarette. My pack was running low. John sat staring at the sky, probably thinking of the spliff he’d like to roll, of the spliff that all four of us not only wanted, but probably needed, to smoke at this point. Seth, as usual, was untouchable. He stood quietly by the colossal drums set, reciting his rap lyrics under his breath. I walked over, and tugged on his trench-coat sleeve.
“So tell me, Doctor Who—when do you think this show is going to start?”
He smiled. “Probably whenever we start playing.”
At seven, the sound guy unloaded another heap of equipment, and began asking us if we had extra cords he could use to rig everything up. We each had a few, but with as long as this set-up was taking, I was doubtful we’d be able to reclaim our equipment after playing. In the end, we gave him the cords, but it came with the bitter realization that we had just entangled ourselves until the end of the evening. As I finished my second beer, I caught a flash of brown out of the corner of my eye.
“So Robert,” Andy crooned, his voice as thick as shoe polish. “Everything going okay up here? We about ready to start?”
I pointed to the sound guy. Someone from the Johnny Steele band was talking to him now, as if pointing out what cord went where. “We’re just waiting on the sound. As soon as we do mic checks, we’re good.”
Andy turned toward the lawn, where married couples and their kids were taking seats. I noticed a batch of young teens had started popping up in dress shirts and slacks. They escorted old ladies to tables, and offered to fetch juice or soda from the Libation Station. One of them, Andy’s son, looked up to the stage, his face drawn into a serious scowl before looking back to his watch. The next moment, he was shaking hands with an arriving guest. I felt like the show was being taken over by the junior high mafia.
Finally, I said again, “As soon as the sound guy’s ready, we can play.”
“Great,” Andy said, slapping me on the shoulder. And then he was gone. Over the next half hour I watched his brown coat dart in between guests, scurry up to the cook, and disappear for brief intervals inside the house. Kevin and John started to look as droopy as I felt, and even Seth’s bright blue eyes hinted at weariness. At seven forty-five, it was dark and it was cold. I had worn shorts, unprepared for both an outdoor show and starting any later than seven-thirty. My fingertips were frozen, an ailment I attempted to remedy by smoking until I was down to my last two. Though I couldn’t see the audience over the blazing floodlights facing the stage, I could hear them chattering. They sounded bored, irritated. When Andy made an announcement for dinner from the balcony, I heard someone mutter, “Wasn’t there supposed to be music first?”
The situation on the stage, at that point, had gone from mostly hopeless to completely fucked. In addition to our every last cable, the Johnny Steele band had lent the sound guy most of their equipment as well. The stage was something out of a technophobe’s nightmare: there were more amps and speakers than could have been used by a band twice our size, and what had once been a concrete stage was now a writhing thatch of black rubber pythons. I figured that at any moment, one of three things was about to happen: the sound guy would suddenly figure out how to do his job; the crowd would rush up in an enraged mob; or, the floor of cables beneath our feet would suddenly burst into flames, reducing us to ashes in a single second. Expecting any one these scenarios, I decided to get my last beer.
“Still not playing yet, huh?” The girl at the window looked smug.
I almost told her that the sound guy said her braces were fucking with his equipment, but instead I said, “Nope.”
“I’m guessing you want your last beer?” She had all the charm of a prison warden.
“Yes,” I said, deciding to wage what little war I could. “But I’d like the can. The whole can.”
“I can’t give you the can. We need to make these beers last.”
“But I’m in the band,” I told her. “The band gets free beer. Everyone knows that.”
“I don’t see why you’re making a big deal out of this,” she huffed. “I mean, you guys haven’t even played yet.”
“It’s not our goddamn fault!” I said, and a couple people turned around to see why I was raising my voice. An overweight woman in a pink shirt shook her head disapprovingly.
“These people hate you,” the attendant hissed. She slammed a full can of beer on the sill of her window. I took the can and walked back, not saying a word.
“Dude, what is wrong with you?” Kevin asked as I came onstage. “What, are you starting fights with the drink bitch now? Everyone was looking at you. You should have seen Andy—he stopped smiling for a minute and everything.”
I fished a cigarette out of my pack. The last one.
“Fuck Andy,” I said.
I looked into the crowd and saw flickering candle-flames only. From the darkness, someone called, “Start!” Others joined in, and a chant began. I checked my phone. 8 p.m. I exhaled a long breath of smoke and savored how effortlessly it came from my mouth, that nothing could keep it from escaping upward, where it insisted it belonged. “Let’s just do it,” I said. “Let’s go.”
The band followed my cue, but before I could play, the sound of trumpets came blaring over the fence. The four of us stood frozen for a moment, listening carefully as the sound quickly revealed itself as a mariachi band. A fucking mariachi band had just started playing right next door. I heard more murmuring from the darkness, and looked to the only three faces I could see. My band shrugged, and I shrugged back. We were going to play. We took a collective breath, and as I pressed my fingers into the key for that first, sweet note, the noise that fell upon my ears was incredibly mediocre. The instruments sounded fine, but it was impossible to hear anyone’s voice. We pushed through the first song, and a light applause trickled from the crowd. I put my lips to the mic and made a joke about the mariachi band. No one laughed. I saw John’s head drop from where he was sitting, practically buried beneath the drum set. I played one of my tunes, and the sad, thoughtful choruses clashed awfully with the jolly horns next door. Less applause that time, and even less for the next two.
When we finished our fourth song, which was just halfway through our set, Andy appeared onstage, smiling and waving at the audience as he came close to my ear. “What do you say we get the next band on for a bit, and have you guys finish out in an hour?”
I pulled back and looked into Andy’s face, inspected each perfect, glowing tooth. As if I could’ve said no, in front of all the people I couldn’t see but I knew were there, fidgeting uncomfortably in their seats, beyond total disappointment with the band that stood around for an hour and a half. I could feel the attendant watching from her window, heard her crusty voice replaying itself in my mind: These people hate you. I doubted she was wrong. “That,” I said softy, “would be great.” I thanked the crowd, motioned to my band, and we stepped out of the lights and into blackness.
The mariachi music continued, but if the Johnny Steele band could hear it, they didn’t show. They did a quick rearrangement of the stage, rerouted a few wires, and hit it. Their sound came pouring forth with the bold precision of the radio. These were not originals, but covers of Steely Dan, Sublime—artists the audience didn’t only know, but loved. Heads started bobbing, feet started tapping, and Johnny Steele howled while smashing an expensive tambourine against his hip. I heard someone whisper to his wife, “See, now this is actually pretty good.”
Seth and Kevin were getting drinks—I had refused to go back to the Libation Station—so I stood with John by the fence, smoking one of the few remaining cigarettes he had left. We didn’t say anything for a long time. Like myself, John is a self-proclaimed asshole, and no verbal communication was necessary to convey the loathing for Johnny Steele we both shared. It wasn’t until he started singing “Sweet Home Alabama” that John said, “I fucking hate this band,” and walked away. Seth and Kevin arrived a minute later.
“Yo Roberto,” Seth said, “Kevin and I had to apologize before that girl with the braces would give us any beer.”
I rolled my eyes. “Isn’t she the worst?”
“I dunno,” Seth said, taking a drink. “She seemed pretty nice.” When Kevin nodded in agreement, I walked away, too. I found John sitting by the car, putting the finishing touches on a spliff he had just rolled up.
“Splife?” I asked.
“Splife for life,” he said, lighting the tip of the cone. He took a few pulls and passed it over. I held the smoke in my lungs, savoring it like a profound thought. As my mind relaxed, it settled on Johnny Steele, who had since begun singing the requested “Blackbird.” Steele didn’t write his own music, obviously, but he was what people wanted. Familiarity. These were the songs that people had listened to a thousand times, had been conditioned to love by mainstream music; his purple sunglasses and mane of gold hair were comfortable, understandable symbols. People recognize a musician in cut off jeans and a tight t-shirt; they panic when the bass player is wearing a trench-coat. Plus, I bet that smooth asshole put a donation in every time he got a drink.
“There is no way I’m finishing that set,” I said when I handed him the spliff. “These people hate us.”
“Not as much as I hate them,” John said, throwing the roach into the street.
I was thinking of how to tell Andy we couldn’t finish the set, wishing that, when I had first gotten there, I had used that line about my parents being killed. Suddenly, the street erupted in the harsh red-and-blue blare of police lights as three cruisers pulled up in front of the house. It turned out that Andy’s school of music had failed to check if neighbors would mind were they to host an outdoor show. I didn’t see Andy talk to the cops, but I could imagine him grinning widely, slipping out of a door as they tried to ask him something, guilty enough to be in question, but innocent enough to walk away smiling. When the cops finally left, the four of us took the stage, congratulated The Johnny Steele band on their set, and began gathering our cords from the tangle. The drummer complained about how they hadn’t been able to play their entire 22-song list. Then, Andy came on stage and put a paw on one of Johnny Steele’s bowling-ball shoulders. They shook hands awkwardly, the way people shake hands when one person is handing the other a folded check. I looked over, hoping my band hadn’t seen, but everyone shook their head in disgust. For us, the show hadn’t paid.
We didn’t talk as we packed the rest of our equipment. Everything was put in its proper place and carried to the car, some of the larger amps moved with the assistance of the junior high mafia. As we were getting ready to leave, the tallest teen, Andy’s kid, grabbed me by the shirt-sleeve. “Andy would like to speak with you,” he said, as if he were taking me to see the Don.
I followed him inside and upstairs, and saw Andy sitting in a plush, brown-leather chair, holding a glass of whiskey on ice as he stared wistfully into darkness. “Dad,” the teen said, and disappeared.
Andy stood up smiling. His breath was sharp with alcohol, but his grin didn’t sag a bit. “Great,” he said, pausing for emphasis, “Great show tonight. I love the cops, you know what I mean?”
I wanted to agree with him, but it was hard for me not to imagine him asking us off the stage without a police hat and baton himself. As far as I was concerned, our party had been crashed forty-five minutes ago. “We really appreciate the opportunity,” I said.
But Andy was already turned around, grabbing something from a tabletop, which he brought back over. “We’re having a little Octoberfest concert here—what do you say?”
I took the flyer between my fingertips, and looked up. I smiled as big and bright as Andy, and for a moment, it was like we had two spotlights shining into each others’ face. For the first time that evening, I curled my lips all the way up to expose my waxy-yellow teeth, the under-bite that can begin to look grotesque if I grin long enough, the way a word sounds funny if you say it too many times. I wanted Andy to see my teeth, the food caked in the gums around my canines. I wanted him to smell the fumes drifting out of my esophagus. He faltered slightly beneath my unrelenting demon’s grin, and I moved an inch closer, the hair on the back of my neck prickling as the mariachi music crept in through the open window. “Andy,” I said, so close I could smell my cigarette breath rolling right off of him. “We would love to.”